'Space Fence': Pentagon Awards $915M Contract to Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin won the Pentagon contract for the so-called "space fence" Monday, a system that will track and catalog space debris circling the planet with a radar system established on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

"Space-based technologies enable daily conveniences such as weather forecasting, banking, global communications and GPS navigation, yet everyday these critical services are being threatened by hundreds of thousands of objects orbiting Earth," Dale Bennett, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin's mission systems and training business, said in a statement.

"Space Fence will locate and track these objects with more precision than ever before to help the Air Force transform space situational awareness from being reactive to predictive," Bennett continued.

Lockheed Martin said it will start to construct the space-fence system on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in early 2015 with plans for a fully operational system by 2018.

The Post reported that space debris has grown after more than 50 years of spaceflight. The junk includes spent rocket boosters and defunct satellites. Officials told the newspaper that, when these objects crash into each other, it creates even smaller floating objects.

The current warning system used by the Pentagon has issued some 10,000 warnings of close calls to the U.S. and international satellite owners, according to The Post. The Pentagon alone operates 1,200 satellites.